Tag: politics

The Moral Arc

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

“The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today I went to the reflecting pool for the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. I couldn’t hear well enough to distinguish speakers, but I’m going to use an idea from one of them and I wish I could give them credit. It made me stupid for a second as my internal computer lagged trying to process the moment.

They said, “the moral arc doesn’t bend itself.”

I was glad I was sitting down.

Raphael Warnock said much the same thing on Rachel Maddow the other night. He said, “pray with your lips and your legs.” I grew up with much the same idea… that if you’re going to pray, put on your shoes. You don’t feed people based on whether they deserve it, you feed people because they’re hungry. Then you pray about it and do it again.

Christianity at its best focuses on self-improvement, and social justice is a wonderful way to point groupthink in the right direction. You are bettering yourself with other people trying to better themselves through the common activity of standing up for minorities, both the ones you are and aren’t. Trauma has many basketball courts in one gym. All minorities have it. Jesus would have been subject to those same things, because of course he was Jewish, but his government wasn’t. The Sanhedrin was very much the governing body for Jews, but the Romans had control of everyone.

I wish more people would take in what a radical socialist Jesus was in his day and time. I wish more churches would take in how much their prosperity gospel is embarrassing. It is not what was ever intended by a group of radical Jews who went their own way. What people tend to forget if they aren’t interested in theology is that Christ would understand exactly nothing about what was said in the New Testament because they weren’t written down until 80 or 90 years after he died. The whole thing is a game of telephone. The Nicene Council approved international standards for the Bible, but Jesus still thought like a Jew. Jesus does not give a fuck about your abortion. I guarantee it. The Talmud is sane in this regard.

We were marching for all of it. Black lives matter. Female bodily autonomy. Black trans lives matter. Queer people matter.

Today, the moral arc of the universe did indeed bend toward justice.

But it didn’t bend itself.

I remembered that Laura was a preacher’s kid. What I did not realize is that both her parents are retired from the United Methodist Church, albeit a vastly different kind from my dad’s because I was in Texas and she was in New England. But, this woman catches jokes that no one else in the room would understand, and it cracks me up. I felt the same way about her mom. I said, “my dad was a pastor, but my mother was more the ‘smile and play the organ’ type.” Without missing a fucking beat, she says, “oh. That’s more typical….. as IF THEY HAD A CHOICE.” I died for a second. If my mother had been standing there, she also would have been struggling not to fall on the ground laughing.

It was great to feel at home with both of them right away, instantly translating from virtual to physical as if it meant nothing at all. I think people our age do it better than most, because we’ve spent more years chatting online than older people have, yet we’re still young enough to remember life before the Internet… we’re basically the first generation of people who have connected for years virtually because we could.

It would be impossible to keep up the rate with which we contact each other if we only had letters and phone calls. Therefore, the transition is much more difficult. It’s easy to continue a conversation when you can talk right up until you find each other in front of the Washington Monument.

Turns out, I can look forward to seeing more of Laura eventually because even though she lives in Boston, her aunt lives in Alexandria. So, it’s not impossible that we’ll run into each other, especially for days like this. In fact, Laura is only here for 12 hours, and her mom flew in yesterday. It made me feel like part of something very historic- I knew it was, obviously, but that it also meant a lot to all Americans because people had traveled so far for it.

I also didn’t hear about it, strangely enough, and I say that because I read the news all the time. Both Laura and her mom said that it was hard to find information about the event and that even they had to do some guesswork. All of us thought the crowd would be bigger, but it was great seeing everyone, including the Kings and the Sharptons.

Part of being there was just enjoying the moment, even when I left to get water and couldn’t find my way back to where we were sitting. I got lost in the moment when Sasha Baron Cohen was speaking about the collaboration between blacks and Jews. I did not know that it was historically black colleges that opened their doors to Jewish students when they were rejected from other American schools. It makes sense. Trauma sees trauma. Both have been tortured by the same people.

It’s the same type people that would torture me. Never in American history have any minorities been truly safe from persecution. Black people didn’t have rights in England, so why would they here? We forget the Founding Brothers were English just like we forget Jesus was Jewish. The Founding Brothers suffered under the weight of white supremacy Jesus and the country still won’t give it up. To the majority of Christians, what I am saying is blasphemy because the picture in their heads is as white as they are. The picture is every bit as infectious as the Coca-Cola Santa Claus, yet neither are real. The historical Jesus, in my head, looks like Reza Aslan (He’s the author of “Zealot,” about the historical Jesus).

Black people have held onto their Christian faith because they saw the real Jesus like no one else…… they saw him for who he really is.

They saw a man broken by the system who rose up and rescued himself, bringing us all with him. White supremacy will be the end of Christianity as Evangelicals drive more and more people away who leave church altogether instead of joining a liberal congregation fighting against the system. They’re so done with the hypocrisy that they just won’t come back unless a relative is singing, preaching, getting married, or dead.

If you insist on treating your very modern members like they’re failing at life because you’re making them terrified of ancient rules and regulations, you’re doing it wrong. Jesus was not a professional Christian superhero.

He was a man broken by the system, as all minorities are at one time or another.

The problem is when your church doesn’t talk about it.

11:00 on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America.

Not just by race, but also perspective. When you think of Jesus, you think of you. So, if you are the majority, so is he. You are upholding a system that has gone back thousands of years, new generations picking new people to hate. How Jesus’ message became so twisted is easy to put together when you look at it that way. As Reza Aslan said in a famous YouTube video, “God doesn’t hate gay people. You hate gay people.”

It makes the march come together, this feeling of solidarity. If we ban together and include women as minorities, the minority is the majority. We have protested in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Now it’s time to protest, and soon it will be time to vote. If you’re going to pray, put on your shoes.

The moral arc of the universe is long and bends toward justice…… but it doesn’t bend itself.

Laura

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.

My friend Laura contacted me yesterday to ask if I knew anyone going to the march tomorrow. I said, “first of all, I didn’t know there was a march tomorrow. Secondly, if you’re inviting me, I’ll come.” I don’t know Laura at all. She’s a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend. We’re both the nerdy Biblical scholar type…. she came up with one of the best lines ever…. I said something about Jesus being hilarious and she said, “it’s a dry humor….. they’re desert people.” So, if Laura is inviting me to anything, I’ll go. In fact, the last text message I got from her was “boarding. Talk later.” I believe she is coming from Boston (Logan) to DCA.

Her mother and aunt are also along for the ride, and I’m looking forward to meeting them as well. It’s been a long time since I just lightened up and agreed to do something outside my comfort zone. I don’t even know what I’m protesting today, but I mean it.

In case you’re wondering, this is what Bible nerds do. Jesus was marginalized, a person of color murdered by the state. Jesus taught women when it just was not done. He gave away free health care to poor people without asking whether they were his countrymen or not.

One of the biggest moments in Christianity is often overlooked, and it is the key to unlocking my faith.

It’s when the woman comes to Jesus to ask for a blessing and he says no. She says “even the dogs are worthy to gather crumbs at the Master’s table.” You can see it register on Jesus’s face. It’s written straight, but that thought process must have cooked his noodle. Jesus changes his mind. From then on, he is not just the savior of the Jews. He is the savior of the gentiles as well. Now, I know we cannot make this lesson look perfect in today’s world, but we can make it look like the miracle it actually is. Progress was not a one-way street. Jesus was changed by those around him, too.

That’s what I’m doing. I’m allowing my thoughts to be changed by those around me, because I know that no matter where I’m going today, it’s not going to be somewhere I don’t like.

The only thing I know at this point is that the march starts over by the White House, 17th and something. I have looked through the Post trying to find a link, but I got nothin.’ I am willing to be led because I trust in my friend. What we’re protesting is almost secondary to a day out in the sunshine when the high is only 89 degrees and not 104.

I get angry and sullen on this web site because it’s the space where I’m allowed to be that when I feel it. Sometimes I don’t think I do a good job of expressing when the world flattens me with wonder. I am going to walk where Martin Luther King, Jr. and Raphael Warnock have walked. I’m going to walk where Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug walked. I’m going to walk in the footsteps of other people advocating for desperately needed change, because that is what my faith calls me to do. It doesn’t tell me how to vote. The stories of Jesus do that.

To see Jesus as he of “the cross and the lynching tree” instead of “awesome cosmic power, itty bitty living space” is to understand that he didn’t change anything by revolutionary acts on a grand scale. He and the people around him decided what was worth fighting for, and decided that was more valuable than fighting amongst themselves.

Coming together for a common purpose is what groupthink does when it’s pure. It just so rarely happens when people are determined to believe they’re the main character instead of seeing the cause that way.

I love things that help me remove my ego, because with protests, neither Jesus nor I have any dog in the fight except letting people who don’t have voices be amplified. That the least powerful among us should also get what we need from a corrupt government.

He was also pro-government to the level that people needed to interact with it. Of course you should pay your taxes…. “render unto Caesar,” just don’t let the picture of the man on that coin be the one who holds your soul.

It’s not the last thing I’m excited about. That concept is what excites me about everything. There is a way to both fit in and stand out. It seems that Washington, DC is the best city in the world for it. We are gathering for a common cause, not a common person. We are changing each other collectively instead of making a person’s picture the authority on our lives.

Not even Jesus would want that.

The United States: A Primer on What’s Wrong with It and Why

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I wonder a lot about the future, which is why I was so glad I got to write out my thoughts about it. I’m not a scientific genius, but I do have enough smarts to predict what’s going to happen if we can’t live above ground, or the ground is ruined by radiation. Unlike Fallout 3, there is a brighter future underground, because we don’t have to live socially any different than we do now. It’s our physical limitations as humans that bind us to a huge problem, a lot of whom don’t see there being one and won’t do what’s necessary until their house explodes or there’s a food shortage because our farmland has been nuked.

A lot has been written about our dystopian futures, but it’s all fiction. We’ve never stopped to think about what would happen if we were faced with nuclear war or natural devastation. If the United States is attacked with a nuclear bomb, it would take the ground around it a hundred years to be fertile again. Nuclear treaties keep the world safe for a number of reasons, mostly because world leaders are not able to starve their own people or others if NATO is any threat at all. The immediacy of nuclear war would kill people right away. No one thinks about the fact that their grandchildren and great grandchildren may not get enough to eat because there’s not enough soil unaffected by radiation.

It’s not just bombs. Nuclear power is a wonderful thing right up until it’s not. Things go wrong at plants with the best laid plans. We can’t ignore these things, we have to find a way to successfully live around it. Leaders who wrestle with nuclear war are only thinking in the moment, and I cannot fathom what that discussion was like during WWII, particularly among the Japanese after they didn’t know what hit them.

By the same token, they’re responsible for their own radiation leaks with plants like Fukushima. That’s not to say that nuclear plants are bad and we should get rid of them. Just that for now the technology and chemistry is not capable of defeating human error.

People aren’t capable of acting as smart as they are under the best of circumstances, and the level of intelligence in the room goes down the more people are in it. Groupthink is a powerful drug, as evidenced by the former president’s lovely mugshot. We cannot defeat global warming with anti-vaxxers. It cannot be done if they can’t be convinced that science is real, vaccines are real, and global warming is not a hoax just to fuck with them.

Scientists are not saying that the globe is heating up and will get warmer consistently. They are saying that as the planet heats up, the swings in temperature, air currents, and water level will create chaos. We are not slowly getting warmer at a rate where everything happens concurrently. We are adjusting to a new reality…….. poorly.

The worst part is feeling the politics of all this. Other countries are so much more aware than we are, and so much money goes into making sure we’re as environmentally disastrous as we can possibly be for way longer than we can afford. The oil and gas industry own the United States and we cannot pretend it doesn’t. All climate change policy has to pass based on interest, and they buy out all the votes they want. If you want to grease the wheel, you will. who cares whether it’s legal or not?

We are not the only ones in the world that have a corrupt government, but we’re one of the countries that can do something about it because we aren’t beholden to a monarchy or a despot (anymore). We are also not the only country leaning toward the fascist right, which generally leads to deregulation of all sorts of things. We cannot afford to move backwards, and currently not enough of us are voting forwards. It’s not just the presidency. It’s the congress and local politicians down to the school board. The entire country is centered around who believes facts and who doesn’t. We found out who would justify civil war and who wouldn’t….. and what we found is “more than you might think.” Are we really going to wait until there’s a section of the military that’s on board with a coup? Because this is how you get a coup de etat. It’s not the difference between supporters and non-supporters of the orange gelatinous shitbag, it’s between the people who pick a side and who don’t. If we don’t vote out fascism, we’re going to get it.

I cannot live under that regime. No person of color or queer can. So far, we have no way in some states to advance representation to the smallest degree. The state of Arkansas just passed a ban that high school students cannot take African American history in high school to count for college credit because it might be some sort of indoctrination. “Heather Has Two Mommies” is not welcome in any Florida classroom. I would suggest, before people ban books about persons of color or minority sexual orientation/gender, that they go back to Emett Till. This covers both bases. People can still be killed for whistling at a woman for being black or same sex. Violence against lesbians is very real, although men are more likely to rape us than hit us.

Emett’s story encapsulates everything that’s wrong with our society, as well as what is right in terms of what his legacy has created. I just think it needs to create more by white people recognizing that this country is very much not what they think it is. That’s because all communication in telling the majority they’re wrong is being banned as well. Voting rights in Georgia come to mind.

Perhaps it would be easier to work together on future problems if we weren’t so busy actively trying to destroy each other. The environment is not just physical. Safety doesn’t always correspond to the physical structure you’re in. Sometimes, it’s a feeling. Safety in our society is falling by the wayside. Even the cops are in on it.

Those who study history are desperate for those who don’t to get a clue, but politicians have no idea how to get ahead in the system while also changing it. The government is not built for quick change, and I think that’s mostly good because too much change with this large a population would break most people trying to keep up. That being said, it’s time for more than what we’ve been getting. The planet is getting sicker and only one party cares. Other countries care so much more than we do that we’re an embarrassment.

That’s probably because we don’t have Eisenhower taxes coming in anymore. Government research is not being funded to the level it could be thanks to people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Yes, Bill Gates has a foundation, but it’s not exclusively working on American infrastructure like the country would be able to if the same money came to us in the form of tax. We could spend more on climate change because we have money. But, of course, going to space on a vacation is much more important than funding grants for science and technology research.

We don’t even have government-funded health care, and even with our population we have the money to get it done…. we just won’t. Yet prescription drugs are lower in cost everywhere in the world because buying in bulk for the whole nation makes it where drug companies are only getting a set amount of money for them and not jacking up the price in different areas. There is a marked difference between drug prices even doing the research at home on your own. If you call three different pharmacies, you’re going to get three different answers…. except on over the counter meds. They seem to be about the same price no matter where you go because there’s only so much you can charge for paracetamol.

The question becomes which problem to work on first? It’s people. Nothing happens without buy-in, and we are lost to figure out how to create it.

Meanwhile, we make movies to highlight all the hypocrisy. The reason it’s not getting through is that people either think it doesn’t apply to them or the message is being written off as leftist propaganda.

We had a good thing going in the 50s in terms of the space race and figuring out how to adapt society to move forward. The thing that didn’t is the people. All the racism is still here. All the homophobia is still here. Everything that needs to be weeded out never left, it just went dormant.

You can fix the technology, but you can’t defeat stupid.

As the National Park Service says, “it’s hard to make containers to keep bears out. There is considerable overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist.”

I think that’s a lesson from which we can all learn.

Random Thoughts and Feelings

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 7 Comments

I already did the writing prompt for today, and it didn’t really bring up anything great for me. I don’t know that this entry will, either, but I have a lot on my mind and figured this is the one place where I can just ramble about nothing to see what happens.

It’s 7C/74F with a 44 percent chance of rain in Washington today. The District is gorgeous when it rains. Drivers are no good at it, but the storms themselves are strong. I might even get to see a few lightning bolts, which means either run down to the sunroom when it starts raining or hide in my bedroom. The storms look beautiful through the skylights right up until they don’t. I’m not generally scared of thunderstorms, but there have been a few that really haven’t been pleasant. I’m used to it, though, because we have the same type flash flooding in Houston that we have here. It’s better to be entertained by storms, because we of the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coast are only given one commandment…. Thou shalt deal.

The carafe on our Cuisinart coffee machine broke, so Hayat got us a whole new system (I don’t know why, it’s just cool). I am way behind the eight ball on this whole pod system thing, and Keurig is the biggest brand name for them, but this Cuisinart has a regular-sized carafe on one side and a place to make single mugs of coffee/tea on the other. I thought I would miss not having the hot water heater, but I don’t because I can just put Stash tea leaves in the pod instead of coffee. It’s every bit as fancy as the one I used while I was house sitting for Thomas, it just doesn’t have Bluetooth to be able to “order” from upstairs. It’s ok, though, because the coffee maker will only do about three tall mugs’ worth before the water needs refilling.

I’m currently brewing Amazon’s dark roast, and I have to say it’s pretty tasty. I haven’t tried the disposable pods because I know they would solve the ADHD tax of having to clean out the coffee maker and terrible for the environment. I think I’ll just keep buying my own when I can find the best brands available for the money on my own. If I’m shopping at Starbucks, I like Komodo Dragon best. If I’m shopping on Amazon, I have several choices. I lean toward store brand dark roast, but Cafe Bustelo is just as cheap and that’s what they use at all my favorite Cuban restaurants. My only rule is that I do not prefer light and medium roasts, but I will drink them if that’s the only thing available.

I really like coffee because it’s so comforting to wrap my hands around a mug. The one I’m currently drinking from is copper. I can’t say that it makes the coffee taste better, but it feels good in my hand. When I buy coffee mugs for myself, they’re usually large with a big handle so that the mug doesn’t feel unbalanced. Nothing feels worse to me than a mug where the handle isn’t big enough to support the weight of the cup.

It’s a sensory issue thing, just like Bombas socks and American Giant hoodies.

I’m also taking a lot of acid reducer because I don’t want to live without spicy food. It’s really the thing that’s handling my congestion, because even with taking Sudafed PE, it’s not completely knocking it out. As a singer, it bothers me when my entire facial mask is full and I can’t breathe, because allergies are the quickest path to laryngitis when your throat is so raw from having to deal with the crap invading your face.

My favorite thing right now is a scrambled egg sandwich with butter and hot sauce.

With all the talk about Hawaiian pizza lately, I bought one just as a vehicle for ghost pepper wing sauce. I got extra cheese and shredded parmesan to bake on top. Maybe that will be dinner today, but I still have some butterscotch pancakes left over from making a batch last weekend. Easier to heat up something I’ve already made, and these pancakes are divine. The butterscotch chips that end up near the surface melt into the butter, and it’s decadent. It’s cake that tastes like a pudding cup. Millions of school children can’t be wrong. 😉

I am all about trying new things these days, obviously. I found a meme the other day that reminded me of Zac….. “remembering the day I kissed a beautiful twink in Brighton because she thought I was a lesbian.” My comment on the meme is that my partner is male and that is our exact description. It makes me laugh out loud that when I dress in what I call “girl clothes” or “ho clothes,” we look depressingly heterosexual. When I’m all dyked out in a baseball cap and jeans, it’s a whole twink/bear mood…… except Zac is clean shaven.

It’s okay that sometimes we look depressingly heterosexual some days, though, because there are days when I just feel depressingly heterosexual. It’s a whole mood. It doesn’t have anything to do with my orientation. It has everything to do with playing into the well-ingrained enculturation of heteronormativity. But Zac and I can share that without it being weird. If I feel strange, I can just tell him that.

Besides, he gives me street cred when I’m writing about intelligence because no one trusts a reporter, but everyone trusts unconfirmed chatter. 😉

However, none of the stuff I write about is unconfirmed. Zac cannot tell me things directly, but he can point me in the right direction. If I find news articles that back him up, I’ll talk about it here. If I don’t, it’s something we need to keep between us until I can verify he’s right. It has nothing to do with Zac giving me information he isn’t supposed to give, it’s that if I write about intelligence here, I don’t want to spread misinformation.

I don’t link to news stories, generally, but my facts are easily verifiable when I use them because I’m talking about current events.

For instance, we’re talking about the Republican party intentionally trying to elect a criminal worthy of a high crimes and misdemeanors charge, a clear and present danger to the United States both foreign and domestic. You cannot let Hillary Clinton’s wisdom, former SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON’s opinion because she was in the room, fall by the wayside. That two-bit sheister is at least a Russian Useful Idiot if not a full-on asset. There has to be a reason that Trump was comfortable extorting Zelenskyy, and now he’s a hero to most Americans, blackmail forgotten. Don’t let him forget.

The Republicans need to face the fact that if they reelect Trump, they’re going to sell Ukraine up the river if the conflict isn’t over by then.

Also, if Trump is a UI, that means we have no idea how many Russian intelligence officers are affecting American voters through the cunning use of other people they can sucker into working for them, unwittingly or not. I do not think that Putin wants war with the United States. I think he has a vendetta and wants to take us over from the inside. We have not done a great job stopping it from happening. There are probably a thousand people just like “The Americans” embedded in Washington alone.

Just like we probably have a thousand case officers on the ground in Ukraine.

I have said this before, but Zelenskyy is my age, a creative, and absolutely brilliant. I have a dog in this fight because I will be crushed if anything happens to him. It would be tantamount to killing Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Martin Freeman all in one.

“Servant of the People” is just one of the reasons Putin is as dangerous as Trump. If you embarrass either “leader” on television, it will not go well for you.

I’m not asking for things to be perfect around here. I just think that we’re trading national security the longer Republicans hold onto the myth that Trump is capable. He is. He is capable of turning the United States into one of the shithole countries he proclaims to hate, all by being tightly controlled by the Kremlin. Does this sound like anything a SANE Republican would do given the hysteria toward Communism in the 80s?

Trump is not even capable to the level of a Reagan or a Bush. That’s why if he’s reelected, he’ll be perfectly happy to let other people run the United States, no matter what it costs. They don’t even have to live here.

But trust me, they do.

Everything going through my head feels random, but at the same time, my feelings are focused on world issues and I’m not lost in my own problems. I am done ruminating about a whole bunch of things that have made room.

Perhaps it’s good that my feelings truly are random, because they stop me from hyperfocusing and losing myself.

I mean, if I have a movie star name, I should at least grow into it.

😉

Commence Smiling, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

Now that I’ve eaten, I realized I would like to continue talking about nothing. Things that just make me happy whether I’m trying to answer a WordPress writing prompt or not. I can make anything into a happy thought given time and space, but here are the things that make it easy to love life.

  • Spring and autumn make life bearable. Neither deals in extreme temperature (yet). I love jacket weather because I don’t like summer clothes. I’m always too cold once I go inside.
  • If you are going to come to The District, it is best to come in Spring so that you can experience the monuments and the cherry blossoms at the same time. If you don’t come in the Spring, every tourist trap gift shop and museum will have something that looks or smells like a cherry blossom……. but not really. Not a digital reproduction in the world compares to standing next to a tree.
  • If you are going to come to the DMV, it helps to learn about us before you get here. There’s a culture to the Metro. There’s a culture to DC that everyone ignores because they’re just trying to hit tourist spots. Learn where politicians and reporters come to dine and just be quiet. Soak up information, don’t start fights with your political rival. You’ll learn more the less you say. Learn about gogo music, wings and mumbo sauce, Frederick Douglass’s house. Washington is covered in African American history, and especially as white people we should be silent observers. Their voices first, our empathy. You’ll learn more the less you say. Like chasing a story, it is your witness that matters, not your will.
  • Even trying to find wings and mumbo sauce (I like fried rice on the side, some people like fries) is a step in the right direction, as is going to have a half smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl. Ben’s Chili Bowl was the African American History Museum before we actually got one. There are pictures on the wall that are just unbelievable, but you have to look. REALLY look. You have to read the captions that aren’t there, because white people do not have the right to ask those questions. Introduction to someone’s pain is an invitation-only event.
  • Washington is the only city for me that contains real connection to the Revolutionary War, and not because other cities didn’t participate. It’s that Washington is where we keep the memories. Washington is a treasure trove of news, stretching back to before the country began. I remember the first time I drove into Alexandria and read the charter. It was established 30-odd years before the Declaration of Independence I would imagine that Silver Spring is the same way, because Baltimore was established in 1729. We just kept creeping toward each other, which birthed The District and in a lot of ways, me.
  • I woke up the morning after my 24th birthday and the whole world had changed. I was still young enough to have a child’s reactions to it all. It was too formative not to count. Plus, it really helped when I moved to Portland when I learned that people were suspect of George W. and therefore me, so I just started telling people I was from DC….. at a time when that was the lesser of two evils. It was either that or to tell people that I understood their hesitation and their crap wouldn’t work on me because I’d had to put up with him way longer than they had.
  • Molly Ivins made me happy because she put words in my mouth that I sorely needed. It was good to make fun of him, and she knew all the best ways. He WAS born with a silver foot in his mouth. He DIDN’T compare to someone like Al Gore, a successful senator by his 40th birthday when on W.’s 40th birthday he realized he probably had a drinking problem. Molly didn’t think that the loyal opposition was wrong all the time, necessarily. She just believed in picking the smartest players in the game. Bush’s only play was that his vice was smarter than he was….. who was also evil. Molly made dealing with all of that better. Molly saw that my life was hard and why.
  • Shane Harris makes me happy. When I’m not sitting in the middle of the Spy Museum with six books open on the floor, I could on him. He’s the National Security desk at the Washington Post, so even though I’m not working in his time period, I learn how intelligence says things to the news. How do I get to the real story when all we get on the news is “senior intelligence officials indicate” and not how they got there.
  • Jen Psaki makes me happy because she and her department handle news as well, like hearing “White House officials indicate” and not how they got there. It’s all connected, because intelligence is given to policymakers. I have found that the more I research, the more I get bored and then find an AHA! moment. I am not chasing James Bond around town. The reason true spy stories seem so exciting is that the real story is often too boring to film. Just trust me. But when you hit a gold mine, you really, really hit one. If you live abroad, try it in your own country, especially if you’d like to come here. The easiest path is to tell CIA information that they need. If you get a job working for us where you live, you might end up here quicker than applying for a visa. Your mileage may vary. See web site for details. No promises. But if you’re already interested in spy shit, anyway, it’s a good move. I promise that you cannot make yourself love it. But that’s for operations. They also need just as much support staff as everyone else. My cousin James painted offices. Since Foster and James worked for CIA, I would have been involved somehow, too, because I was taken with Foster’s story from the time I was born. However, since my genetics dealt me a losing hand in the mental health department, I never tried. But like most people the right age to have obsessed over The West Wing, it would take dragging me away. I couldn’t be involved in intelligence, but they don’t have those restrictions at State, which is often the same job from a public and private perspective. It all fits together, it’s all one puzzle, they all play a role. The only thing I’m not interested in is military, because I want defense to be clever. I watch Doctor Who. I have standards.
  • Doctor Who makes me so happy. I am proud to be part of a tradition that has lasted decades. I am proud that they taught me to love the whole world at once, that every person has a story, and they all matter.
  • It makes me happy that I have proven my story does matter, because I write it exactly the way I want, say exactly what I want, and people find it interesting. I do not have to be less. You have allowed me to be my whole self. Thank you.

Stability

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are you most excited about for the future?

The immediate future is the most exciting. My sister and I are going through a thing (together, not fighting) and I asked her if I could write about it. She said “write whatever you want” and I said “you never have to get me a present for anything ever again.” This is not that entry. We’ve decided to hold off for a little while because OTHER FACTORS AT PLAY. The point is that my next words were “but if you were going to get me a present, it would be cool if you came up for my birthday this year or next year.” I go about my day thinking it’s a pie in the sky hope and in a few hours we have tickets for Charlotte Cardin on October 24th.

I realize that Lindsay is my sister, but she’s such a badass that it kind of rattles me when she wants to spend time together because I am so insecure at times. You’d just have to know how powerful she is to even begin to understand why I feel that way. She eats Republicans for breakfast and doesn’t waste time on ketchup. I have problems with prioritizing two tasks at once. I constantly have to keep a picture of her as a teen in my mind, because Lindsay’s professional persona is intimidating, but the baby isn’t.

I don’t worry about the lobbyist, but I’m the last woman alive that changed her diapers every damn day. The baby’s needs will always wake me up. The baby’s needs will always come before mine. Nothing in my life is more important than making sure her slap bracelet never comes off.

In December of 1990, the parsonage in Naples burned to the ground. My sister heard a fireman say that the fire started in the attic, and it was lucky that no one was sleeping in that bedroom (hers), because the attic rafters would have fallen on the bed and crushed whoever was sleeping. She internalized it, and things might have been different if we’d gotten another house in Naples. But no, we were moved to Houston before the committee even formed to rebuild. The stress of the fire and the culture shock affected us differently. I got sucked into band at school, choir at home, and “my first marriage.” Lindsay developed a phobia around going to school (now does it make a little more sense why that relationship knocked me on my ass? I met her six months after the fire.).

My mother was a stay at home mom. I think Lindsay thought that if she wasn’t home to protect my mother, that something would happen to her while she was gone. A trauma therapist told my dad to have a routine with her, and to get her a slap bracelet (I don’t remember whether she said that specifically, or just something Lindsay could keep on her) so that she had something to keep the routine going in her mind.

Every day, my dad would drive Lindsay to school, and he’d say:

Lucky day…. Gonna get an E today…. Like I say…. Wave to me…..

So, touching that slap bracelet made her remember what my dad said, and we were all with her when she touched her wrist. The therapist got an E that day, because it really was excellence on her part.

So, when I think of Lindsay walking into the Texas Legislature to protect queer kids, it’s me who needs the slap bracelet.

I can’t breathe when I think of how hard her job must be and how much stress she’s under…. And how none of it is her fault. God is not making her life more difficult. People are. People who think The Bible is an authority in the lives of American politicians are trying to make the rest of the country believe it as well. It’s maddening because we supposedly have separation of church and state, but Texas doesn’t believe in it so they just live around it.

As my friend Rev. Chuck Currie has pointed out, “Jesus said ‘let all the little children come unto me.’ He did not say ‘let all the little children come unto me….. except trans kids.’” My sister has to tell the Texas and federal government why trans kids need their medication. Their medication. She’s not fighting them on their wants and desires. She’s fighting conservatives for trans kids’ basic needs.

Meanwhile, Lindsay and I are both the preacher’s kid from “Saved.”

When it comes to Texas Republicans, I want to crash a van into their Jesus, and my Jesus would let me.

Their Jesus is about power over, and is a reflection of white supremacy. The church universal has wasted too much time worshipping whiteness. It’s not just an American problem. Desmond Tutu crashed a van into South African apartheid Jesus long ago.

It makes me laugh talking about my sister crashing her van into Jesus because over the years we’ve both loved Mandy Moore.

Ok, I’m going to take a second. We’ve got to talk about this. Mandy Moore didn’t win nearly enough awards for “This is Us.” Her craft was simply outstanding. OUTSTANDING. Every actor should watch her, because watching Rebecca Pearson is a master class, particularly when time jumps back and forth so that she’s playing different ages in the same episode. It’s a tour de force performance, and she kept it up for YEARS.

I needed to take a break and focus on Mandy Moore for a second, because I started flooding out at “slap bracelet.” There are tears and snot all up in here.

To keep it light for another moment while I collect myself, I think Coca Cola needs to start sending thank you cards to all the Diet Coke drinkers. This is because everyone likes soda, for the most part. Diet Coke drinkers are straight up addicts, and because of the world I inhabit, most of them are musicians. I have never met anyone who drinks Diet Coke that doesn’t drink a hell of a lot of it.

I’m not sure whether it’s the caffeine or the aspartame or whatever, but it does make you crave it with unusual intensity. I used to drink six a day, and I was a rookie. Every soprano I know carries it around like a water bottle. Diet Coke has even made it into a music joke.

How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to hold the Diet Coke and one to go get her accompanist to do it.

It’s a riff on “how many SMU sorority sisters does it take to change a light bulb?” “Two. One to mix drinks and one to call daddy.” I’m betting that the capitalization of daddy varies by age.

Quitting Diet Coke is relentless, and part of it is the carbonation. It’s hard to give up fizzy water altogether when you’re not used to still. Now add caffeine on top and quitting becomes even more useless.

The only thing that helped me was thinking that even if I was rich, $10 for 12 cans would still seem ridiculous.

Now I’m addicted to drink mix. It doesn’t even have to have caffeine in it because I’ve found that the reason I needed so much of it is that I wasn’t sleeping. Now, I take medication for that because especially during hypomania, I won’t sleep for several nights in a row. That doesn’t happen very often, but my sister is a lobbyist trying to get health care for trans kids and if I was going to stay up thinking about a problem, this is a good one.

My daughter is trans. I hate qualifying it, but I did not birth her. It was better than that. I told her dad in not so many words that he was being an absolute dick to her and to get his shit together. She responded……………. Positively. When we met, she was going to be my stepdaughter. Her dad is out of the picture, but we’re still going strong. So, whether The War Daniel and I get married or not, I have a child adopted through the rainbow flag. I’m here for it, and it’s a lot. But to be clear, Cora is not the problem. Cora is the recipient of the problem.

I still want to marry Daniel, but I have reservations that will never go away, and he hasn’t talked reconciliation. To me, that’s that. But you leave a relationship with an *adult.* Cora is now an adult, but the power dynamic is the same. I don’t talk to her about my feelings for Daniel and she wouldn’t know anything if I wasn’t a writer. I feel that it’s okay for her to read my thoughts, because they aren’t directed at her. In writing, I can make it more clear than I could in person that she’s not the monkey in the middle. Daniel doesn’t think of her that way, either.

To my beautiful girl, I have only found out that the dog is named after a heavy metal star. So, I just have the names Virginia Woof and Sidney Brisdog in my back pocket, as well as a name I picked up for a cat on “Will and Grace.” Jack’s cat was named “Chairman Meow” and I’m still not over it.

That’s because Cora is free to talk about her dad, but I do not have an opinion on him. I can’t. He is making his own choices, and I don’t have to like them. I just have to respect them. Also, whether it’s my own echo chamber telling me this or whether it’s my intuition, I think Daniel got tired of my patois reading as male and started competing with me to see who was the bigger asshole. Unsurprisingly, I “won.”

You can’t win against someone who was raised in NE Texas and has bought in to Republican fodder. He thought I was trying to reprogram him and I was trying to impress the seriousness of what his idiocy has caused because he didn’t bother to get educated when Cora came out.

It’s not inexcusable to be uneducated. It’s inexcusable not to believe your child when they come out. Disbelief is relative. Daniel thought of himself as having to put up with us, and not because he’s a bad person. It’s that he’s a self centered alcoholic, but I repeat myself.

Self-centered alcoholic is almost tautology.

If someone is trying to tell you that you’re hurting them and you react as if it’s all about you, it’s best to walk away. Do whatever it is you need to get yourself together, because the world is not going to think of you as the protagonist in every damn story. If you have been raised male, you think a lot about this.

That’s kind of the debate between cis and trans women…. That trans women tend to step all over cis women’s asses because they were socialized as men when they were young. This is the hashtag “not all trans women,” and yet it is not untrue, either. Their voices are loud because they’ve been told they deserve it. Cis women have been property for hundreds of years. Chaos ensues.

I would also say that cis women generally don’t stand up for themselves and trans women don’t realize there’s a problem. There is a big damn problem, but it is not one that will last forever. The bitch of it is that cis women need trans women because they don’t assume other men deserve shit and act as such. Cis women, not so much.

It’s especially the debate between cis lesbians and trans women, because they have even less political power. Trans women don’t always see cis women’s complaints as real. That they’re being misogynistic and their ire is invalid.

Cis women don’t give a rat’s ass most of the time. We only react to being ignored. I am of the mind that trans women are women. Period. I also don’t think trans women acknowledge how being socialized as a man as a child affects how they walk in the world as adults. That there ARE differences even though with puberty blockers, trans kids are being socialized at a very young age in their true gender.

Cis women also need to deal with their imposter syndrome and learn to kick men’s asses the way trans women do.

My only gripe is with trans women who think it’s all about them. They don’t think that, but I see the dark side. I see the devastation it causes when trans women tell the people who care about them that they’re not doing enough. How fast do you think things are going to change in the South? What is your deal? Instead of bitching all the time, send flowers.

Notice I didn’t say stop bitching all the time. Just recognize that you’re putting a lot of your injury on the same people who are trying to solve the problem. In other words, take out your anger on someone who deserves it and stop biting the hand that’s feeding you.

I’m not sure I’ve earned the right to have an opinion here, but I’m 45 years old and people have been all over my ass since 1990. I couldn’t be my authentic self, either, and in some parts of the country my internalized homophobia still kicks in hardcore. I cannot walk into just any bar, either. I wish trans women, especially young ones, would read up on Matthew Shepard. It wasn’t that long ago. The queer community as a whole is being thrown under the bus, and I realize that trans women’s plights are bad, but I don’t think they’re worse than they were for me 25 years ago. NONE of this is getting better.

I also don’t think there’s too much difference between coming out as a trans child now and coming out as a gay kid then. Back then, gays were the last acceptable minority to hate, and they’ve passed the savings on to you. But don’t think it’s worse for you. You just aren’t looking at the problem from the same perspective, because you’re in hell and no one knows it better than me.

Cora and I have actually had this conversation, and it led to one of the biggest moments in my life. I explained some of the queer history she doesn’t know, and asked her to have empathy. She took the note and made me cry so hard I couldn’t breathe.

When I said that my middle name bothered me she said, “I have a name I’m not using. Would you like to have it?”

And that’s when I knew that there would never be another Cora, and there would never be another Lindsay, either.

I am just glad that I have them in my future. I wish everyone could.

This is My Song

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today I was very surprised that Bryn told me she loved Finland. Full stop. She didn’t get it from me…….. and is going to adopt Finnish Independence Day with me. Here’s a breadcrumb for the people who already know this story. It’s on December 6th.

It’s so stupid and yet it works. Believe me, she is not adopting Finnish Independence Day just to share something I like. Nope. She loves it for the same reason I do, because when we write our stories together, they fit like holding hands, which is very interesting in and of itself. I’ve written about it before, so let’s just not go there. It’s not relevant anymore, and it’s too deep for today. I want to focus on something else. Basically, being a Finn for a day helps me not think about something else that needs to stay walled off, because I’ve already had that exorcism and feel peaceful about it….. but not invincible. Triggers happen.

I have a long sleeve gray t-shirt that has the outline of Finland on it, so I have something supportive to wear that day. It is my armor. I laugh to myself when I read Jesus saying “it is finished,” because to my mind that’s a typo.

I don’t think I’ve ever said that before…….. about something being too deep for today. However, the weather is miserable and I don’t want to help it out.

When we get the pennies, we’re out of here. At least for a little while. We need to stand on the steps of the “outdoor living room” in Helsinki, with all the military bands and choirs and the blue and white candles and the lights and EVERYTHING. I’ve just told her be prepared not to want to come home. It’s the happiest country in the world, and we’ll be there in December, so if that’s not a road test I don’t know what is. I don’t mean this December. I’m just holding onto the dream of doing it *someday.* I want to save up my pennies because there’s a chef I will do some shady shit to meet. Hell yeah, reindeer pizza. Plus, I have developed a soft spot for salmiakki (sp?). The other plus is that most Finns speak English, so we wouldn’t have to be fluent in Suomi unless we just wanted to be sort of impressive. Why would white girls speaking Suomi be special IN FINLAND. 😛 It would blow their minds to hear us in our Oregon and Texas accents, because it would only be when we switched to English that people would realize something is afoot at the Circle K.

An additional bonus is that we’ll get to see what used to be a part of Russia without ACTUALLY HAVING TO GO THERE. I am seriously unimpressed with Russia and geeked out over Finland. I watched a documentary on a few of the epic battles. Keep in mind these people basically live in Hoth, okkkkkk. So, they played to their strengths. White camo. Skis. Bazinga.

If I was Russia, I’d be pretty pissed that a country full of skiers fucked up my program, too. But they deserved it, just like they deserve Zelenskyy handing them their asses.

Since conversation about Finland invariably leads to conversation about Ukraine given world events, I also told Bryn about “Servant of the People,” the show that launched Z’s career. He created some amazing people that I can’t wait to spend more time with, even if it’s just watching the first season again.

Maybe I’ll ask Zac if he wants to watch an episode. We’re getting together later and it seems like a show he would watch. I’m not sold on it for tonight, but I do think he would think it’s funny. The pilot is a masterpiece. For the uninitiated, here’s the basic plot.

Ukraine has ranked voting. That’s the first thing you need to know.

The second is that Zelenskyy’s character is a history teacher. The day before the election, one of his kids films him going off on a rant about the government and what it should be doing, and doesn’t see a kid filming him, who promptly posts it on YouTube. Oblivious, Zelenskyy goes to bed. The kids have registered him as a candidate, and he’s in the bathroom when the Secret Service arrives to pick him up.

Every bit…. EVERY bit as funny as “The Office.” For instance, Zelenskyy says that he needs to go to the mall to get a CD for his niece. The Secret Service says they’ll take care of it. They can’t find the CD, so they just go and pick up the band.

Life happens when you’re doing something else. Through comedy, Zelenskyy absolutely filets Putin. I have no illusions about the fact that Putin’s ego probably helped cause all this if my blog is any indication. Zelenskyy embarrassed him on television, so he deserves to die.

Imagine what Trump would do if there were no laws preventing him from something like starting a war because someone embarrassed him on television. I’m surprised he didn’t do it while he had the chance. All of his other enemies were merely people who didn’t agree with them, and the facts were on their side.

I imagine Trump being Putin’s confidante, where they can talk about all the ways in which the world is just so unfair to them.

Maybe they’d be happier if they celebrated Finnish Independence Day. It worked for me.

Life Before The Internet

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday’s writing prompt was asking if I remembered life before the Internet, and I have to say “not really.” That’s because I’m the last generation born that didn’t have technology everywhere as a small child, but it started creeping in when I was older. Nothing felt like a leap, just solid movement forward. For instance, I had a computer in my room when I was eight. It didn’t connect to anything, and I was still obsessed with it. So, my memories of life before the Internet are limited to age 15 and under. As I age, those memories are slipping away no matter the subject.

I miss the simplicity of computers without networking, because I knew for sure my files were safe at all times. I didn’t have to worry about viruses because my computer was what we’d now call “air gapped.” That’s keeping a server offline on purpose so that no one can get into it that doesn’t have physical access to the machine. I air gap my desktop when I’m writing so that I can’t zone out. I put my tablets in airplane mode. I care about security, and have encrypted and password protected anything I’d hate for others to see, because no one is close enough to me to read them. In some cases, no one ever will be that close to me because I have to have that one space where I can say anything and come back and read it later. I teach myself about relationships by writing letters never meant to be read by them, because I’m through trying to solve our problems with their input. It’s what brings me closure faster than anything else. To reread my own words and be critically aware of the ways I’m participating, because I can’t do anything to control the outcome of another person’s reaction to something I’ve said. The only thing I can control is my own actions, and why at times the Internet is more of a threat than it’s worth.

I decided that if we were going to have this new form of communication, I was going to learn everything about it. I started using Linux because I thought of myself as a coder, but over time have realized that I just prefer the environment as a daily driver- just a menu and a terminal. HTML and CSS are not considered “programming,” per se… and I have a third grade education in SQL. I can read a program and tell what it is supposed to do easier than I can create one on my own. Speaking of SQL, databases have fundamentally changed the Internet, because all of the sudden script kiddies had access to information they never could have gotten without an inside job, like any rando with an A in hacking could try for the firewall at the NSA. There are dire consequences for it, but only if you get caught. A virus hidden in the RAM of a server is barely detectable, and affects computers all over the world simultaneously. That is why people were so reluctant to do online banking, and the only thing I miss about that is human interaction. No one has to be up close and personal with anyone they don’t know. There is an epidemic of loneliness in the US which we perpetuate in our relentless quest for personal freedom. The Internet has changed our DNA to fully believe that those small interactions don’t matter, and now half the country believes there’s such a thing as alternate facts, and that no truth is objective. There are no subject matter experts that rise above party, because we don’t have to know them. We live in echo chambers because we can….. at the cost of a loving society because if you don’t want to know a wide range of people representing all sorts of opinions, you won’t. You miss out on the pain of opening up and having your thoughts rejected, and the beauty of being changed by something the other person did.

I was born during the Carter administration, so my first real memories are of President Reagan. Therefore, I’d been born during the last time there was hope for bipartisanship that didn’t set out to emotionally destroy people, like the insurrectionists turning on Mike Pence and threatening his life…. People he had once thought of as his base pursued him relentlessly. When you escape with your life, you’ll never be the same. No one is taking responsibility for that, when they absolutely turned off their brains and stopped seeing real people, or real information.

It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times, because pre-Internet was pre-24 hour news cycle and the urge to keep up. There wasn’t the hunger for knowledge there is today, which has turned the Internet into America’s next civil war, emotionally speaking. The cult started with lies that spread while truth was putting on its shoes. It was too late to be objective because they’d been brainwashed to believe that everything in front of them was wrong except for one guy with no qualifications who made himself seem that important and for some reason other people believed it.

I don’t think that could have happened in the late 70’s/early ‘80s because interaction through face time and touch is key to not losing connection with them. It doesn’t create false courage, the ability to rip people a new one in public with no regard for real life consequences…. Even if it’s your mother.

In the entries where I’m taking my mom to the mat, it’s only now that I can reflect on her whole life without offending her. This is because she would focus on the negative instead of the positive. Would only see me as trying to hurt her rather than wrestle with real feelings on my own. She doesn’t need to know what I thought now, because I know we did our best and now there is no chance that anything will change. Something fundamental and precious was lost, but that doesn’t mean people don’t have problems that take time to resolve.

For instance, I can fully accept that not wanting me to be who I am because she thought I’d cause my father to lose his job was traumatic. I can also relate to her treating me that way because she didn’t want to make things harder for either one of us. She didn’t know the first thing about being gay, and relied on her own instincts. She didn’t know, and so it wasn’t malicious. That’s how we could be so close and so distant at the same time. We rejected each other over mutual fear, and resolved it toward the end of her life. I’m glad for that, but destroyed she didn’t live longer so I’d have more memories of complete peace and security. There were so many ups and downs that I own all of them, because when I became an adult, she was no longer responsible for my actions. I shrank back from her in some ways, because over time she hadn’t committed to learning anything about me and I didn’t want to press because she’s already shown me she wasn’t comfortable.

I think the Internet changed that, too, because she could see how mainstream being queer was becoming and didn’t feel like it was such a burden carrying what other people thought of me. Before the Internet, we talked through the Oprah Winfrey show. It’s the only thing we were both obsessed with at the time. I started watching when I was nine. I saw a gay person for the first time on her show. I saw a trans person for the first time. I saw a person with AIDS, and the families with their quilts.

So, by the time I actually came out to her, at least she’d welcomed gay people into her home through the magic of television even if she didn’t know she’d met a gay person before. That’s because it would be impossible to go your whole life and meet one. They just might not tell you.

Memories of my family reign before the Internet because we spent more time together. The thirst to connect virtually because it was easier became so vitally important. The Internet plays to my strengths, because I communicate better in writing. I just need to watch what I’m saying and how I say it…. Not so much with my blog, but with my letters. I’ll get all riled up about something and release too much fire. If they release more, I feel bullied and get angry. I pop off and say things before I’ve had time to think about it. I think the difference is that traditionally I haven’t been good at getting over the things I’ve said because they torture me…. This is because I can only do something about my own behavior, and I don’t see it until I’m outside the situation.

I feel like working on issues is key, because I don’t ever want our communication to come across as bullying again. I have often been close to people who think that working on issues is bad, and I have learned to walk away when I continue to feel bullied because I take responsibility for the times I pop off and get angry when other people don’t do the same thing. Their anger is completely justified, and mine is not. My words were hurtful, theirs were not. I’m just being a victim, they didn’t do anything. The fact that this is the pattern with which I am the most comfortable disturbs me, because I know I have a lot of work to do in the areas of being patient. Taking a step back.

The Internet changed me because I thought that being physically in the same room was equal to feeling emotions when I read. That’s because I tended to get frustrated when people were talkers and not writers. It’s not because I wasn’t willing to change mediums, it’s that their reaction was that their words weren’t good enough for me because they couldn’t write as easily as I could. Intimidated by me to an enormous degree, when I could care less how people communicate as long as they’re doing it. I don’t like when people tell me that my words are so intimidating that they don’t want to communicate at all. They don’t want to even try. Meanwhile, I am begging for them to show up. I don’t want to beg to people who use their lack of skill with writing to avoid talking about a situation at all. If you don’t want to write to me, I will try to keep from overwhelming you with reading… provided you’ll actually go for coffee or a cocktail. Tell me that working on something with me is important to you even though my medium of communication is the written word and yours is not.

Don’t let me be lonely even when we’re together. Otherwise, I count on interactions with people who don’t mean as much to me. I have to force myself to engage in small talk, otherwise, I won’t talk at all. I don’t have the safety and comfort of history with the tellers at the bank. It’s only sad when I want people to feel close to me and they don’t want me to feel close to them, and not because they don’t want it. They aren’t prepared to accept that my emotions are large on the page, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are in real life. It’s because when I’m trying to convey an idea, I might not know your history with what I’m about to say and tap into an image you think is one thing, but I meant it as another. Like saying I wouldn’t want to have something and it comes across as “I think you’re bad” when I mean my quota is full on that particular desire. That you’re giving me all I need already.

In person, I could say that with my eyes, and do.

But I did it so much more frequently in my life before The Internet.

50 Things You’ve (Probably) Never Been Asked

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Hat tip to Martina for the writing prompt. 🙂

1. What is the color of your toothbrush?

It’s black & red, but I need a replacement soon. Stay tuned.

2. Name one person who made you smile today:

Bryn, who said she was sending me birthday presents in the mail (my birthday was 10 September). I love mail.

3. What were you doing at 8 a.m.?

Talking to my sister on the phone. Sometimes we talk during her commute.

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago?

Drinking coffee with cinnamon & soy milk and talking to my new housemate. I’d tell you all about the conversation, but it wasn’t that interesting. If it had been, this entire entry would be about it instead.

5. What is your favorite candy bar?

I’m not really a candy bar person, although I do like Zero. Right now I am all about licorice allsorts. I ordered the original from Geo. Bassett & Co., Ltd. for my birthday and I just sat there and ate them until I felt fat…. and then I ate some more.

6. Have you ever been to a strip club?

Several, but it’s not a turn-on. I have to love the person to be attracted to them. There was a strip club across the street from my apartment in Portland that I used to go to for a drink occasionally, because it was within walking distance of my house. But I didn’t sit where you could see the women. There was a closed off bar section that was really fancy and the bottles were back-lit with neon. I didn’t even know something that cool existed in my neighborhood, and to this day I’m not sure why I went in the first place. I’m sure it was originally someone else’s idea and I just went with it, but I went back because it was a cool place to hang and no driving afterwards.

There is also a famous vegan strip club in Portland that I went to for another lesbian’s birthday party. I ended up sitting outside for most of it, but honest to God I loved the food, particularly the sloppy joes and mac & cheese. The part of the show that I saw, I liked, though. It wasn’t just women looking bored and dancing to music, it was acrobatics that defied the laws of physics, like Cirque Du Soleil but naked. Not only that, there were no French existentialist clowns. For that reason alone, 10/10. Highly recommend.

7. What is the last thing you said aloud?

I can’t remember exactly, but I was trying to get out of the conversation with my roommate so I could go back upstairs and enjoy my coffee quietly.

8. What is your favorite ice cream?

Every flavor I try is my new favorite, but I have a special spot in my heart for the banana/vanilla swirl soft-serve at Florian Fortescue’s in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My dad, sister, and I got different flavors to try, and I think that was the winner out of all of them. Now that I’ve been eating a lot of plant-based frozen stuff, I like “ice cream” made out of almond milk that has almonds in it….. really ties the dessert together.

9. What was the last thing you had to drink?

Coffee…. are you even paying attention?

10. Do you like your wallet?

I love it, and I haven’t seen one like it, so if I find one, I need to buy it because this one will wear out. It has a clear pocket on the front that I’m sure was originally for an ID, but I put my Metro card in it so I don’t have to take it out to swipe. The only thing I don’t like about my wallet, and this is a small gripe, is that it has a money clip on the outside that makes it uncomfortable to put in my back pocket.

11. What was the last thing you ate?

Extra, extra Hot Tamales.

12. Have you bought any new clothing items this week?

Does a new clear protector for my Apple watch count?

13. The last sporting event you watched?

Franklin, one of my housemates, is a rabid soccer fan, so I watched a game for a few minutes with him, but I can’t remember who was playing.

14. What is your favorite flavor of popcorn?

If I’m buying it while I’m out, it’s hard to find but I love cinnamon-glazed. I also love caramel-glazed and cheese corn mixed together, which is much more widely available. If I’m making it at home, I pop low calorie butter-flavored and then spray Pam on it to get turmeric and All-Purpose seasoning to stick (the more garlic, the better).

15. Who is the last person you sent a text message to?

Well, I use FB Messenger a hell of a lot more than texting because I can respond on any of my devices. It was to Dan, confirming our birthday plans for Tuesday.

16. Ever go camping?

Once. For me, the line about only wearing long underwear in your sleeping bag was the worst piece of advice ever. I finally got up around 4:30 and put on every piece of clothing in my suitcase. I would probably enjoy it more at a lower elevation where it’s not so cold. I was on Mt. St. Helen’s, which to me was freezing even in the summer.

17. Do you take vitamins daily?

Not always, but I do take an iron pill daily because I donate platelets and your iron level has to be above 12.5. Multivitamins give me terrible gastrointestinal distress, so I limit my intake…. but sometimes I need them because I am not the best eater on the planet.

18. Do you have a tan?

As Jim Gaffigan said, “I am what you would call ‘indoorsy.'” I tan vicariously through my friends who do that sort of thing. I think I’ve only tanned a few times in my life, and that was from living in Houston/Galveston. The most serious tan I ever had was spending weeks outdoors. I went to Mexico on a mission trip, then spent a week at choir camp, then three weeks at marching band practice before school started. Marching band practice in Houston is akin to signing up for a three bedroom, two bathroom condo in hell, except hotter. Who was it that said given the choice, they’d live in hell and rent out Texas? Same.

19. Do you prefer Chinese food over pizza?

I can’t. I eat pizza every Friday night in memory of my mother, who started the tradition when Lindsay and I were young. Besides, Argo, Aaron, & Dana would be so metaphysically disappointed (I’ll link to the entries, but if you got those jokes without clicking on the link, you are an OG “Fanagan”).

20. Do you drink soda with a straw?

There aren’t many “always” and “never” questions in this life, but here’s one of them. I never use a straw if I’m sitting down at a table, but I will always use one on the go. I am down with both the reusable and plant-based plastic straws, and I am so proud that my McDonald’s (don’t know if it’s a national thing) has switched to the latter.

21. What did your last text message say?

“Leslie, your Rx order is ready. Get it delivered!” I get wigged because they don’t offer delivery in my area and it irritates me that I get the possibility of delivery with every message and the disappointment of reality at least three times a month.

22. What are you doing tomorrow?

Finally, I have something exciting to say on the topic!

  1. Drink coffee and be awesome.
  2. Find something cool to do until 8:00 PM. I’m thinking of going to the National Gallery of Art, because I just learned today that they have a Van Gogh room, and I didn’t get nearly enough “time with him” at the Musée D’Orsay. I’ve always said that if I ever go back to Paris, I would like to spend an entire day there, staring at Van Gogh paintings while writing so that my crazy mixes with his crazy and we’ll see what “comes out of us.” I would be lying if I said Doctor Who had nothing to do with this (truly memorable trying to not freak out with joy at seeing The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise for real). By the way, none of the sunflower paintings say “Amy.” I checked. Twice. Also, as far as I know, Bill Nighy does not actually work there. I could be wrong.
  3. Meet up with Dan for outrageous desserts at Tryst. You might have heard of it during the Gary Condit/Chandra Levy scandal. Not why we’re going there, but when Dan suggested it, I realized I’d walked past it but had never been in, so it’s not NOT why we’re going there……….
  4. Curl up with a good book. Right now I am in the middle of Three Women, Blink, and War and Peace. That last one may sound ambitious, but after reading The Moscow Rules, I decided it was appropriate (and only 99 cents for the Kindle version with amazing commentary). I wanted to go back and read Tolstoy’s take on Russian history having started it in high school and never finishing. This time around, I have learned that the Russians thought Napoleon was every bit the fool and tyrant that over half the country thinks our current president is now (for reference years in the future, I’m talking about Donald Trump).
  5. Eventually fall asleep, but there’s no telling when because it depends on how engrossed I am in reading.

23. Look to your left, what do you see?

An empty McDonald’s cup that I need to refill with green tea, all of my medications, and my iPhone.

24. What color is your watch?

It changes at least four times a week, because I have an Apple Watch that makes it way too easy to slip the bands out. Today it is hot pink with a black & white Minnie Mouse face. I have a red leather strap that I wear the most often, with the classic color Mickey Mouse face. Today, Minnie is in grayscale because she is also classic colors and I needed her to coordinate with my choice of band. The face also has lots of colors, as you can put on “complications.” I have no idea why they’re called that. They’re basically “desktop icons.”

bindi-irwin-o-bindilrwin-some-days-you-just-need-to-3323284725. What do you think of when you hear the word “Australia?”

Not a thought so much as pictures of my friend Allison and a meme of Bindi Irwin (if the text is too small for you to read, click on the image for hi-res).

26. Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive thru?

I don’t drive, I am rarely pressed for time, and generally there’s free wi-fi. So, inside it is.

27. What is your favorite number?

So easy I don’t even have to think about it. Eleven. Matt Smith, the baby giraffe in a bow tie (and sometimes a fez), is my Doctor. I’m in love with him a little bit because when he got the role, the Internet rebelled against him and said he was never going to be any good, but I haven’t felt more emotion in the show than watching his interactions with Amy, Rory, River Song, Vincent, and himself in a memorable soliloquy in “Nightmare in Silver.”

Also, Stranger Things. Eleven completes me.

28. Who’s the last person you talked to on the phone?

We have covered this.

29. Any plans today?

Well, my prescription is ready and they don’t deliver in my area.

30. How many states have you lived in?

Lots of geographic areas, four states:

  1. Texas
  2. Virginia
  3. Oregon
  4. Maryland

Maryland is where I have really put down roots, but I would move back to Texas to be with my family in a heartbeat if they needed me. It is the only reason I would ever move again. I’m done.

31. What most annoys you?

A little thing? When people use up all the toilet paper and don’t replace the roll.

A big thing? Injustice, anything and anywhere. I am never more angry than when I feel something is unfair, locally or globally.

33. Can you say the alphabet backwards?

I would really, really have to think about it. Not something I’ve ever really had to know…. although a funny thing about me and the alphabet is that when I was first learning my ABCs, the setup is that my mother’s name was Carolyn. I thought the song went “ABCDEFG, HIKJ Carolyn NOP.” “KJ” is not a typo.

34. Do you have a maid service clean your house?

No, but I would think I had died and gone to heaven if I did. So jealous of Disney Princesses, Mary Poppins, and Molly Weasley.

35. Favorite pair of shoes you wear all the time?

It’s a three-way tie between brown Converse All-Stars, black Converse All-Stars (black laces, rubber, AND canvas), and Keene sandals. I told this to a friend and she said, “ok, you just lost cool points for wearing Keenes.” I had an unprintable response.

36. Are you jealous of anyone?

Disney Princesses, Mary Poppins, and Molly Weasley. I would even settle for Shary Bobbins.

37. Is anyone jealous of you?

I didn’t think so until I was telling a friend that I was absolutely done moving (unless my family needed me in Texas) because I had already moved so much in my life that I was ready to settle down permanently. She told me that she was jealous of me, because she wasn’t ready to make that decision yet. Actually, I’ve had that conversation twice with the same results. One lives here in town, the other lives overseas.

38. Do you love anyone?

Not romantically, but agape and philia are the rivers that run inside me. I couldn’t do without my friends. They are my lifeline, the brothers and sisters I chose for family because my bio family is so far away.

39. Do any of your friends have children?

Yes, some of them even on purpose.

40. What do you usually do during the day?

A little of everything except laundry. It’s an issue.

41. Do you hate anyone that you know right now?

Hate is such a strong word, and changes me a lot more than it changes them…. but everyone I dislike at the moment, I’ve never actually met in person.

42. Do you use the word “hello” daily?

No. I generally say “hey” even though “hey is for horses.” There’s your “Texas-ism” for the day. The reason I don’t use “hello” daily is that I generally only answer the phone that way, and people rarely call me (not that I don’t like it).

43. What color is your natural hair?

Dark brown, but liking it better and better now that I have a few gray strands that look like highlights. I might dye it anyway, though, but only because the color isn’t quite deep enough for me. It looks a bit mousy. Probably won’t go back to auburn, though. Stay tuned.

44. Are you thinking about someone right now?

Deeply.

45. Have you ever been to Six Flags?

I have. I’ve been to three Six Flags-owned parks. Six Flags Over Texas in the Dallas suburbs, AstroWorld and WaterWorld in Houston. For those that aren’t familiar, the company is named after the governing bodies throughout Texas history:

  1. Spain
  2. France
  3. Mexico
  4. The Republic of Texas
  5. The United States
  6. The Confederate States

It seems apropos right now to also give you this fact: Texas and Hawaii are the only states in the union that can fly their flags at equal height to the US flag, because we were both once our own countries.

46. How did you get your scar?

Christ, which one? I fall and hurt myself all the time. Although here are the ones tied for first place. When I was 16, I was cutting a lime with a serrated knife and sliced into my thumb. Those nerve endings never came back, so I have a dead spot I play with all the time. When I was in my early 20s, I had choir practice on Thursday nights and my first wife was way too obsessed with ER. I forgot my house key one night and even though she wasn’t a mean person, she did a mean thing. She wouldn’t let me in until a commercial. So I’m fumbling around in the yard because it’s after 9:00 PM in the fall and I trip over a tree stump, scraping and cutting my shins so badly that the scars are still so deep it feels weird to shave those parts of my legs. Let me remind you that it’s been 20 years, and the scars are no more shallow than when they happened. Geez, and I actually spent time wondering why that relationship didn’t work out……………..

47. Do you have tattoos?

Yes, an ichthus that says “Yahweh” in Hebrew, a tribal dragonfly, a Celtic knot, a quill dripping blood, and $1.83. The last is the smallest, but it’s the most important. Here’s the story behind all of them.

48. Have you ever been out of the country?

I’m not especially well-traveled, but I’ve been to Mexico, Canada, England, France, and The Bahamas. I do have a bucket list, though, and I may never make it to some of them because in the Middle East, I am terribly afraid that everything I want to see is going to be reduced to rubble, and even if it isn’t, I don’t currently have a male chaperone. I’m a feminist and all that, but I’m not stupid.

49. Looks, brains, or personality?

I am going to go with personality, because if they have a great one, their intelligence will naturally show itself. I don’t know many dumb people I could stand for more than a few minutes. For me, personality and brains are inextricably interrelated, because brains inform humor, and if I don’t think you’re hilarious, I’m out.

50. Biggest regret?

Let’s end on something real. I used to be on the “think it, say it” plan no matter what emotions I was feeling. My biggest regret is all the misdirected rage in my life at Argo. It was over-the-top and egregiously wrong, because by then I wasn’t fighting with her. I was fighting the real enemy and Argo was a not-so-casual bystander, the receiver of all the shit rolling downhill. It was not a short amount of time until I realized that I was fighting with two people who weren’t even in the room, and only one of them deserved it.

I am so glad that part of my life is over and done, but if I could pray for a do-over and it materialized, I would go back and love her the way she loved me…. with sweetness, bright, white light, honesty (both painful and real), walking around in each other’s inner landscapes……………… truly receiving all the other had to offer- no more, no less.

@CIA @StateDept

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The news that’s coming out of the intel community ranges from unsettling to terrifying. Some agents think that President Trump is compromised, and I don’t think they’re wrong. So we have a situation in which reports go underground at best, and really good people, brilliant civil servants, just walking away and watching everything burn because they can’t take it anymore. For them, it’s like working in the middle of a raging dumpster fire.

What you see in media is not reality. It’s not all “James Bond moments.” Most of it is poring over documents, and in the field, agents have access to money, but it’s for someone or something else. They make regular government salaries when they could make eight times more in the private sector, and are trying to do the right thing, anyway. Civil servants are desperately needed, especially translators, cryptographers, and hackers- but with the current administration, they’re having trouble filling jobs all over the place.

It’s not just intel, it’s also State. Having a boss actively working against you would be awful in any job. Why bust your ass for so little money when you’re just going to be ignored, anyway?

It is my hope and prayer that by keeping President Trump out of the loop, everyone at CIA, NSA, FBI, State, etc. can make some headway on these clear and present dangers. It is as awful an attack as Pearl Harbor, with the exception that people can see and understand a bombing. It takes a special kind of person to be able to understand and deflect cracking attacks, particularly with voting machines.

The longer this goes on, the more I believe that Hillary Clinton is our rightful president, and now there’s nothing we can do about it, because no one in Congress has brought up having a new election, and even if we did, voting machines can (and so far, will) still be hacked. The midterms, to me, are so scary I rarely want to think about them…. because what if the will of the people is again thwarted? The “blue wave” most Americans want is not necessarily what they’ll get.

Allowing civil servants to be interviewed by the Russians is probably sending them to their deaths, and I wish I was just being dramatic. It would make me happy to know that I was, but I don’t think so. Putin is not known for being kind.

The reason I’m using @ for CIA and State is because CIA’s charter says that they don’t operate within the United States, so it is generally their job to go in country. With State, I don’t think diplomacy will work, and not that it shouldn’t…. that President Trump always calls an audible and works around them, eschewing protocol that has been in place for what seems like eons…. and it’s been like that since he took office, not just recently.

I am devastated that the GOP doesn’t seem to see the difference between supporting a politician and supporting a tyrant…. many of them, actually, because I refuse to believe that President Trump is smart enough to do all this on his own. They are all content to “fiddle while the United States burns.”

Nikita Khrushchev said during the Cold War that Russia is capable of making the United States destroy itself, and now, it’s working. So far, we’ve alienated the countries that would help us if we asked, before President Trump just went batshit crazy on all of them. It wouldn’t even help if President Trump was impeached, because the United States would be stuck somewhere between Leviticus and 1950 with a Pence presidency, and on the topic of Russian interference, he has been strangely silent, making me wonder if he is complicit/compromised as well.

Of course, my opinion is just my opinion, but I hope it’s an educated one. I am just a “news junkie,” with no actual letters behind my name for my thoughts to even matter. That being said, not speaking out is not an option for me. Too much has happened to keep silent, especially with my background in IT. My knowledge on the industry is somewhere between organ grinder and monkey, because I’m just a Geek to English translator. But I have been to lectures on hacking and cracking, so I know just enough to expound on what a dire situation this actually is. We are at war, and unfortunately, on the defense, because we have a president that refuses to acknowledge it.

But the war is taking place underground, in dark places people can’t comprehend if they do not also have a background in computers or networking. Believe me when I say that right now, we are on the losing end, in a total shitshow.

Such a small number of people still want to work for us after just having had enough already. Blessings on the people who have decided to stay and fight, especially as there become fewer of them. Why wouldn’t there be? With President Trump actively inviting Putin to come to the US in the fall, and not opposed to turning over our people to him for “questioning,” they’re probably already aware that what it really means is torture…. but, of course, our president would never assume that, because everything is above board, right? The president of Russia obviously has our best interests at heart, and please read that with dripping sarcasm, deep sighs, and a large eye roll.

Trying to cover up treason seems in poor taste, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Presidents promise to defend us against all enemies, foreign and domestic… and so far, the domestic enemies have become the media and anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly agree with the ongoing plan to subvert the world order.

If you are the type person that thinks everything is going to be fine, buckle up, Buttercup. We’re so far behind we think we’re first- American egocentricity at its finest.

What’s Russian for “we’re totally screwed right now?”

But maybe I’m just being dramatic.

Forces in the Universe

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton’s Third Law of Physics

My interview with the University of Maryland CATT Lab went very well, or maybe it didn’t. It’s hard to tell what’s happening on their end, because interviewers rarely reveal their cards on the first pass. What I mean to say is that it felt good on my end. I think I at least had three of a kind… it remains to be seen whether I’ll come in Kings full over Aces, though. The interviewer and I talked for 33 minutes, and at the end he told me I would hear either way within two weeks.

The best part is not having to sit and think about it. Either I’ll get it or I won’t, and I am going to be happy either way…. because I choose to focus on both cooking and IT as opportunities. Yes, I would make a lot more money in IT… at least twice what I’m making now. But I can’t be assured that I would be any happier than I am right now, something that is also important. I am sure that my new team would come together and everything would work out, but I am already part of a great team… something about which there are no unknowns. I am proud of myself for putting my resumé out there, even with so many variables unassigned.

I hung up the phone high on life, and then I got the notification that Anthony Kennedy is retiring. My mood just deflated like a balloon, and I began to cry. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve taken a Constitutional Law class taught in Socratic Method, where I had to memorize over a hundred opinions and dissents. My favorites, regardless of the former or the latter, have always come from him. Whether or not he is in the majority or the minority, he always has something significant to say. He doesn’t mince words, and gets to the heart of the matter quickly. He has also never been a puppet of strict construction or liberal interpretation. He is one of a kind, and we would be very lucky indeed to see a jurist  like him within the next hundred years.

I do have hope, though. David Souter and Anthony Kennedy were both appointed by Republicans, but it seems that once you rise to the Supreme Court, your political affiliations seem to fall by the wayside (in most cases). Even if the Democrats do not take the House and Senate, there’s still a chance that a Republican government will confirm an appointee that they think will parrot their views, and, as it turns out, not so much. Even Neil Gorsuch has had his moments (moment?), concurring with liberals in part.

It is now 1519, and my inbox just dinged with the invitation for a three hour sit-down with everyone in the department.

The forces in the universe are strong and swift today. It seems an especially good time to say that I am praying on the spaces, and for those just joining us, it means that words aren’t everything- the silence in between is just as powerful…. literally, giving me pause.

#prayingonthespaces

When I Work

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have an app for my phone that keeps track of my schedule called “When I Work.” I also have a Google Calendar feed from the pub that syncs with my personal calendar so I can see work and social commitments all in one place. You know why this is so helpful? I rarely know what day it is. Since my weekends are no longer on Saturday and Sunday, life is simply a blur from one shift to another. I have reminders set to go off two and three hours before my shift, and when they go off, I get dressed. In effect, it doesn’t matter what day it is. When my computer and phone say “go,” I do.

0d6fba54c423e722f9f3f9ec2fe3b365I’ve tried to keep my schedule as normal as possible by coming home and going to bed at a reasonable hour, but I do not set an alarm. I need 10-12 hours of sleep to restore lactic acid, and if I’m in bed by midnight or 1:00, I have plenty of time. This morning, I woke up at 10:00 AM and stumbled downstairs to make the coffee. My roommate was jumping up and down because she’d just gotten a full-time job, and I really wanted to join in, but my energy level was at ZERO. I remember fondly the days I used to be a morning person. It’s just not possible anymore. By the time I wake up, my Aleve™ and Tylenol Arthritis XR™ have both worn off. By the time I start the coffee, I’ve taken more, but they haven’t kicked in yet. So, when I say that I am stumbling down the stairs, I mean it. The bones in my feet seem not to be strong enough to hold me up. I toddle down one step at a time, as if I have regressed to age three. So, after waking up to the feeling I’ve been hit by a truck, someone yelling “LESLIE, LESLIE, LESLIE!!!!!” is nails on a chalkboard. But at least it isn’t something for which I have to come up with an answer, just listen and say “congratulations.” It’s difficult to be so happy for someone and not be able to reciprocate in the excitement they might want.

I feel I have to catalog every moment of this adventure, because the last time I was a cook, it was hard… damn hard… but I look back on it and think of it as one of the happiest times of my life. With this repository, I hope I’m allowing time to slow down so that I can take it all in. Believe me when I say that despite the pain, it’s worth it.

The dishwasher surprised me last night when she spoke to me in Spanish and I understood every word. She told me that my eyes were beautiful. Since she has brown eyes as well, I said, “our eyes are both beautiful- they are the same.” She said that no, they aren’t, because mine have such clarity. The funniest moment was when she was rattling off what I needed to do in Spanish and I said, “lo siento, mi espanol es muy, muy mal. Habla despacio, por favor” (I’m sorry, my Spanish is very, very bad. Speak slower, please). She said, “that’s ok. So is my English.” I laughed until I cried.

The thing is, though, I am exhausted and sore right up until I get to work, and then muscle memory takes over and energy courses through my body. All of the sudden, I am on fire with passion and drive, when minutes ago I was walking around like I’d just been hit by a truck. When we’re the busiest, on Fridays and Saturdays, I sometimes feel as if I’ve volunteered to be in a car accident by the time I get home.

I’ve also figured out why I am usually in the dish pit rather than the line. It has nothing to do with ability. It’s that there are only three people in the kitchen besides me that understand English, and when none of those people are scheduled with me, it makes more sense to get me out of their way. Not everything can be done with facial expressions. But that’s only part of it. The second is that to my surprise, I’m faster in the dish pit than I’ve ever been, which makes the cooks grateful because we can all get out of there earlier. It has never been my life’s dream to be a dishwasher, but the fact that I can flat do it makes me incredibly happy.  Internal satisfaction is so incredibly high, especially since I have received “honorary Mexican” status. It’s like a video game level being unlocked because I’ve gained so many experience points. 🙂

I also think that the other cooks think I don’t like their food, because I won’t eat at work. We are generally fed “family meal” at the beginning of a shift, but what I have learned early and often is that I’m slower when I feel too full, and just need to hydrate. Every day, I say, “no tengo hambre, tengo sed” (I’m not hungry, I’m thirsty). I wait until after I’m done to eat, and try to eat lunch early enough that I don’t feel too fat and happy once I get there. The other cooks do not understand this, and are constantly offering me rich, rich food. Nothing in a restaurant is healthy unless you go to a vegan joint. Just trust me on this one. Lots of oil, butter, heavy cream, etc. I mean, that’s what makes it delicious, and also what makes me feel like there’s a rock in my stomach.

What I will take, though, is when someone makes limonada in the blender. A little sugar and shaved ice goes a long way. It makes me feel almost human again, often why I have a Coke™ or Sprite™ at the end of my shift rather than a “homemade” beer.

Speaking of homemade beer, the woman that started the brewery, Julie Verratti, is running for Lt. Gov. of MD. The LGBT PAC had a meeting at the pub, and I was cut early enough to make it. Remember in The West Wing when Josh and Sam realize Bartlett is “the guy?” Well, Julie is that person for me. At the end of the meeting, I went up to her and said, “it is such an honor to work for you.” She shook my hand and didn’t fail to notice the tears in my eyes. I’m hoping that at some point, I can either work or volunteer on her campaign…. but that would involve asking her if I could, and I’m not that brave yet.

Mostly because I have no idea what day it is when I work.

 

A Little Bit of Everything

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

First, let’s get some business out of the way. My domain name needs to be renewed, and it’s only $18. If you haven’t donated and enjoy this site, please do. If you don’t enjoy this site, donate anyway. I will be allowed to keep feeding your dislike. :P~~~ If every one of my readers dropped a dime in the box, I’d have at least a dollar. I think. Anyway, more than grateful if you can do it, not a problem if you can’t. Just putting the idea out into the universe. Paypal link is on my sidebar.

And now, on with the show.

I got to hold one of my three-week-old “nephews” I’ve adopted through chosen family, and I am not exaggerating when I say that my ovaries exploded. I absolutely cannot imagine having my own child, so it was very nice to borrow one for a few minutes. We sat on the couch as he alternated between sucking his bottle and falling asleep in my lap- the most perfect moment I’ve had in a long time. There is nothing that lifts the grief of my mother’s death better than watching a new baby come alive with personality. For instance, one twin finds it comforting to be swaddled. The other will kick off the blankets immediately. I am grateful that they are fraternal, because as they grow I’ll actually be able to tell them apart. Right now, I have to look very, very closely…. or, at least, I think they’re fraternal. I will have to ask. Right now, they’re so little that they look alike in the way that all babies do.

We had to cut off the water main to the house so we could take out a washing machine. Hopefully, it won’t take that long, because I’m supposed to FaceTime with my father and grandfather later. They really won’t care what I look like, but I do. There’s only so much I can do with my current haircut that doesn’t involve a lot of wax. My hairdresser thinks it looks cute. I’m not convinced. I’d show you a picture, but I really don’t want to. Theoretically, I could fix my hair with bottled water, but it’s in the refrigerator. That is a no dice situation right there.

The weather is beautiful, and I’d like to get outside. I’m having to weigh that against my allergies. I’ve taken Zyrtec, Sudafed PE, and Advil. Therefore, I am now allowed to complain. I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s a thing in my family:

Family Member 1: My ____ hurts.
Family Member 2: Have you taken anything for it?
FM1: No.
FM2: Has it kicked in yet?

I’m sure I’ll feel better a little later, but right now I’m waiting for everything to start working. It can’t happen soon enough. Regardless of whether I decide to take a walk, I have to venture out eventually to get groceries. Even that small time outside is a problem without Zyrtec on board. Spring can really hang me up the most. Once summer rolls around and most of my irritants have burned off, I’ll be fine. Now, everything is starting to bloom, and it’s not deadly, but it is truly annoying.

The only thing to which I’m allergic that will literally send me into systemic urticaria (full body hives/rash) and shortness of breath is sulfa drugs. When I was a kid, I had to spend an entire week in the hospital being pumped full of adrenaline, susprin (basically adrenaline extended release), and steroids. It was so much fun, and I looked attractive. It did save my life, though, so I got that goin’ for me.

Back to you, Bob. Let’s go to the phones.

I watched the president’s entire rant on Fox & Friends, and it was hysterical. He just went histrionic on every topic. Even the anchors looked like deer in headlights. This is because they couldn’t figure out how to get him off the phone. The best part was him going full tilt batshit crazy by saying that he’d made NBC a lot of money, so it wasn’t fair that they were now treating him badly. He also called basically every news organization fake news, for which the anchors at least had the decency to look uncomfortable and awkward.

You know, if every news outlet is “treating you badly,” at what point do you make the realization that you’re the common denominator? With Trump, my guess is never.

The other funny part was when he was ranting and raving over DOJ, and the anchors were all like, “Mr. President, it’s YOUR justice department.”

There was only one point at which I truly got angry. The rest of the time, I was just writing him off like Anderson Cooper, who said that he sounded like a crazy guy on a park bench. The anchors asked if the Republicans had done a bad job of representing the black community, and he said “it was a custom….” Then, he backpedaled and said that Lincoln was a Republican and he did the thing.

I assume he meant freeing the slaves, but he did not give any more details. I honestly believe he couldn’t, great history scholar that he is.

I’m actually starting to feel bad for the Republican party, because even when they try to reign him in, try to get him to keep his damn mouth shut, they fail miserably. If Democrats hate President Trump, I truly believe they hate him less than the people who have to work for him.

The problem with not picking an establishment candidate is that they often have no idea how anything in Washington works, and are dumbfounded once they get there. However, this president is not dumbfounded. He doesn’t know anything, and doesn’t seem to care.

I am mystified by all people like that… both people who think education is elitist, and the people who vote for candidates who believe it, too. I don’t understand not wanting the smartest people in the room to be in charge. If you ask me, and so far, no one has, the biggest problem in American politics is that the skills needed to campaign and the skills needed to be president are at complete odds. For instance, policy wonks like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would have been great presidents, but they’re just not as capable with “show business.”

And that’s what campaigns have become, starting in 1960 with the first televised debates between Kennedy and Nixon. Now, believe me when I say that this is not a treatise on why Richard Nixon should have been elected that year. It’s just that one of the reasons President Kennedy beat him was that he looked like a movie star while Nixon sweat profusely and had to change shirts during commercials. Leaving politics out of it entirely, people are naturally going to vote for the candidate that’s poised and eloquent over the guy who consistently looks like death warmed over.

Much like I do right now, because I can’t take a shower or fix my hair…. and I’m about to be on camera, too.

Send help.

The Leadership Breakfast

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Barbara Bush died, which really isn’t that sad if you think about it. She lived to the ripe old age of 92. I think that’s about as much as anyone should expect in terms of time on earth, and her kids were lucky to have her that long. I mean, when someone dies it’s always sad for their families in terms of not being able to communicate anymore, but 92 is close to immortal in today’s terms of longevity. No one is going to say, “dear God, they took her too soon.” As a fellow Texan, I would like to be able to regale you with a story about how we met, but unfortunately, that never happened. We did go to the same church when I was in college, so I have met her husband. That will have to do.

So, it’s Easter Sunday in about 1999 or 2000 (I am really bad with dates). The men’s group was serving breakfast before service, and the president was going around with a pitcher of coffee for warm-ups. The Secret Service guys were stationed strategically around the room, constantly talking into their wrists.

The president comes over to me and fills my cup, and when I realized exactly who I was talking to, I began gulping down my coffee as fast as I could so he would have to come to my table multiple times, early and often. I am sure he knew my game, but didn’t seem to mind. We had very good, very short talks. I wish my memory was flawless, because I’d love to tell you what they were about. I do remember telling him that I was a political science student at University of Houston, and he told me he used to be a professor at Rice (like I didn’t know that. Didn’t tell him, though……).

I don’t think I’ve disagreed politically with many presidents besides him, although I definitely have a list. I was too young to care what was going on with Reagan, and I love Clinton & Obama. It was just exciting to meet anyone who’d been leader of the free world, as well as being Director of Central Intelligence the year I was born (1977), although he left in January and I wasn’t born until September. Close enough for government work. I don’t know how you get to be DCI if you don’t have any experience with espionage, so my guess is that he was OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the modern CIA) during World War II, and as a cook, I pretend that anyone who was OSS during that time was Julia Child’s best friend.

I was a spazzbasket of excitement, information, and caffeine. At this point, I have conservatively had, like, five cups of coffee trying to talk to him. I debate going over to talk to the Secret Service as well. However, they are designed to look absolutely unapproachable. They definitely pull it off.

What I hope I didn’t pull off was being desperately impressed, because no one that well-known wants to be “on” all the time. He was just there to be part of the men’s group, and I hope I respected that. But so many of my questions just swirled in my head. Did he like Helen Thomas? What’s it like being a wartime pilot? Was he ever under cover? Did he actually know Julia Child, or is that just wishful thinking?

There are so many things I would ask him now that I didn’t think of then, like what was it like for your wife and kids while you were president? It can’t have been easy to be in the public eye, whether there were things you liked about it or not. Also, what was it like to be president when the wall in Berlin fell? Was Ronald Reagan just as funny in private life as he was on television? At the time, all that was swirling in my head was about treating him like a regular human being.

….just like he is right now, dealing with the death of his wife.

Get Off My Lawn

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

I am terribly cranky today.

Yesterday’s pardoning of Scooter Libby was the last straw. The guy committed treason. No punishment the USG could come up with would be good enough. When he outed Valerie Plame, it was damn lucky he didn’t get her killed. Do all intelligence employees under cover have to be afraid of their own employer now? If I was in their position, it would incense me that even people who commit crimes against national security can almost assuredly get away with murder, both literally and figuratively. Not only was Libby’s personal case a red flag, the precedent it sets is even more scary.

It’s probably against the Geneva Convention so this is absolutely a hypothetical situation, but say there was a black op to take out Assad so that citizens wouldn’t be harmed. You could absolutely argue that the ends justify the means, but someone leaks that information to the New York Times or the Washington Post while Special Ops is in country…. not only the op, but the names of the soldiers involved. How long would it take before their heads were on a spike in Damascus? If you said “10 minutes,” I would answer, just like James Comey, that it was nine minutes longer than I expected.

The most frustrating thing about this whole situation is that no one asked me what I thought (that was a joke).

No one asked me what I thought about confirming Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, either. If the confirmation goes through, we’ll have someone in charge of foreign relations that believes in the Bible more than the Constitution. His view of homosexuality is that it is a perversion, and that his belief is not wrong-headed, but a persecution of all Christians. This is not something I want broadcast all over the world, because the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatry Association disagree with that, and have since the 1980s. It is terrifying that only some people’s beliefs have progressed since then because a book that was meant to be a living document, changing over time as we understand more about medicine and science, in their view must remain literal and stagnant. It is generally believed by progressive theologians that the real abomination in the Bible concerning homosexuality was an ancient Canaanite practice of temple prostitution [by both adults and minors], tarnishing a place meant to be holy ground.

As theologian Jim Rigby once said, Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, so it cannot be essential to his teaching. Ancient desert people would never have known same sex orientation as an identity. The word homosexual was not even coined until the 1900s. It is an identity because even queer celibate people still consider themselves as such [using queer as a catch-all for the entire community and not as a derogatory term. I’m gay, so I can use it. Straight people can’t get away with it. Sorry.]. It is absolutely the last thing a follower of the Christ should embrace, because Jesus was constantly widening the net of acceptance, something that has been twisted since the New Testament, where Paul condemned homosexuality.

Paul had other beliefs that were equally toxic, like the prohibition of women speaking in church… something mainline Christians have moved past, so why is being gay different? Additionally, if you believe in one Talmudic law, you should believe all of them, so advocate for shutting down the NFL because players are consistently touching pigskin. You have to ask yourself whether someone who has an international platform should be able to hold these untranslated views, because even if you don’t support our community, do you really think it’s wise to bolster countries who still execute people for these “crimes?” Do you believe in ending lives and devastating families? The stakes are higher than you think.

In the United States, it means a disbelief of the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. If I am truly equal to everyone else, I am a citizen who should be protected by the law, not persecuted by it.

Everything gets messy when the law goes from national to personal, because people can wrap their heads around discrimination of a group, but not their own relatives…. where, often, they fall short in making the connection.

There are still some extremists in this country that are every bit as violent toward the queer community as Sharia law, validated by people who don’t believe in internment camps and execution but aren’t vocal in speaking out about it……….

This leads me to believe that were those things to happen, it would be swift. Ten minutes at most, nine minutes longer than I expect. World issues are literally making me ill.

I am terribly cranky today.